debut novel

Book promotion: Stop trying so hard

- colinashby Leave a comment

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Writing a book…is hard. You go through the happy, yet incredibly draining, experience of churning out the work. Then you manage to round up an editor, go through edits, get a cover designed, formatted, and (ah ha!) finally published.

Then it sort of goes nowhere.

Okay, maybe not nowhere. A good pile of reviews come in, book bloggers review the book, you do a blog tour, family and friends buy the book. After a few weeks or months of the promotion, where do you go?

You didn’t write the book for the money, although you would very much appreciate if people bought the book because then you could cover all the costs you went through to get editing, design, and formatting done.

Marketing your novel doesn’t have to be a draining experience. Sometimes, just maybe, the thing you need to do most of all is…very little at all.

I take it you have never heard of the web series High Maitenance. The show revolves around the people a weed dealer interacts with as he delivers weed to customers around New York City (interesting, right?).

Well, there is insight to be learned from the makers behind High Maintenance. They did hardly any promotion at all for the series.

They sent out the first few episodes of the series to friends, family, and acquaintances…and that was it. They didn’t constantly pester bloggers to review their series, pitch to places, and so forth. The end result of their minimalist promotion? High Maintenance developed a cult following.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Not all people that do little to zero promotion for their products end up hitting it big. In fact, doing little promotion can be super risky.

Investing tons of your time to marketing your novel (when you should be writing) is another risk you take.

Well, there are some things you can do to help cut down on the time-consuming task of marketing your book and spend it on writing your next book.

Get people to sign up for your author newsletter

People who are subscribed to your author newsletter are around 25X more likely to buy your book than some random blogger you encountered or a Twitter follower you got.

If you don’t have an author newsletter, get one. Services like MailChimp help deliver the newsletter to potential subscribers.

Reach out to other people

Ksenia Anske, author of Siren Suicides, posts her word count for the day on Twitter. She responds to things people ask her. Best yet, she compliments other people on their work.

Talk about your writing process (no, really)

Okay seriously, don’t be another one of those people that posts pictures of your perfectly placed laptop along with a Starbucks cup. Show the actual process of your writing (and include visuals!).

Ksenia Anske posts on her blog about her writing process, how she is coming along, and so forth. She shows her writing process even when it is not so glamourous. People like a raw human element to things. 

When people see you at your rawest self, they have the ability to empathize and connect with you more. These are the types of people that buy your books.

Think of cool, subtle promotional techniques you can do for your book

You know that author newsletter you send out to people? What if had first few chapters of your work in progress in one of the newsletters. Send the first few chapters of your novel out, one by one, for free. Hugh Howey, author of the Wool series, did this at first. His books took off in popularity, partly due to it.

Ksenia Anske gives her books away for free, letting readers download files from the drafts of her novels. This in turn, gets her readers pumped up for the final version of the book.

 

Marketing a novel is hard work. Don’t let it consume your time and keep you from writing more. The purpose of your marketing should be on building a community around your books rather than just getting people to buy it.

 

 

  • This can be risky considering most self-published authors make less than $500 per year.

 

Writers & Social Media

- colinashby 2 Comments

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Social media is kind of like this mysterious black hole. Besides seeing the constant #pretty or #blessed photos and posts, you aren’t exactly sure what you’re getting out of it. You can put things into it but you’re not exactly sure what you’re going to get out of it. Plus there is the bad habit of social media eating into your writing time.

We all know how important writing time is (especially with NaNoWriMo upon us). Never fear, there are measurable ways and tactics manage your social media.

Moving to the beat of those metrics

Gone are the days of just blindly posting updates/posts and never really knowing how much they were seen. There are ways to see how much exposure your Facebook update, tweet, or Instagram picture got. Facebook Insights, Inconosquare for Instagram, and Analytics for Twitter are great (and free) ways to measure the impact of your social media updates.

With these tools, you can see which weeks were better than some, days that had higher exposure than others, and so forth. No longer do you have to post a super excited tweet with your novel details on a blind eye!

Don’t stop till you hit the post

Posting only at certain times isn’t something you have to religiously follow but it is helpful to know. Whenever you have exciting details about your novel, revealing your cover, or just want to post an update, post during peak hours so as many people can see it as possible.

This helpful infographic from Hub Spot shows the best times to post and even what to include. Isn’t that nifty?

Hootsuite is your kinda sorta awesome best friend that tells you everything

I’m suprised at how many people still don’t know about Hootsuite. I use it all the time for my PRSSA organization and plan to use it even more once I start hardcore promotion for my novel next year.

With Hootsuite, you can schedule messages for future publish. You can also schedule things to post at the same time across all of your social media channels.

This feature is a hugely beneficial way of taking the constant thought of needing to update, logging into all of your channels and posting to each individually.

Once I start using this to post updates, I can set aside a designated time to craft posts. Then for the rest of my time, I can work on what really matters: finishing my novel!

Thoughts

Self-publishing is a lot of work…and a lot of money. You’re having to do nearly all of the marketing and engagement yourself. It takes a lot away from you. It takes a lot away from writing time. Using the right tools can make using social media a little bit more insightful so you know what you’re getting out of it.

I don’t want to promote my novel and engage with other authors without having a little insight into how much exposure I’m getting and how to maximize it. Or maybe I can just post saying I’m Colin Ashby, buy my novel!!! (note: probably wouldn’t work).

Go ahead and check the sources out and see what works for you. Happy writing!

Blowing Smoke

- colinashby 1 Comment

de9uL9L7RSmzV4SAoAO5_Lauren and Winona Under a pass-1I’m glad most people that read and liked the various articles about me living in my car won’t see this post. This entry is a bit of a turn from the vibe that those car-dwelling articles were about.

Blowing smoke

Ever heard that phrase? Apparently it’s a common phrase yet I had never heard it until recently. There is this version of the phrase that I just put up and there is also a slightly extended version. Both mean similar things. The expression of people giving you compliments and saying they will do something…and then never do.

When the article came out, a handful of people talked about how my story was inspiring, humble, and so forth. I didn’t really understand it considering I just lived in my car to get through college, but nonetheless I went along with it. I knew things were going to die down soon enough. Many people I talked with mentioned that they would try to help me get set up with jobs and careers. They said I could reach out if I ever needed help.

Well, I’ve experienced my fair share of people blowing smoke lately. I was told about a likely job offer only for it to never happen. Then a handful of people got in contact with me and talked about introducing me to potential job leads…only for it to never happen.

I didn’t realize what I was doing wrong at first. I had told the people I was talking with about the types of careers I wanted, the skills I had, and that I was open to moving anywhere in the country for a career I wanted. Things seemed good at first. I was talking with a few people, they were sending information and so forth. The fan fare died down, however, and things have hit a (sort of) brick wall.

I’m no closer to knowing what my future career entails than before the article was released. It wasn’t my intention when writing the article to have it boost my career in any way. It’s just that when I started getting in contact with working professionals saying they wanted to help me, I thought “Hey, maybe a potential lead could come out of this.”

This was far from the reality.

I thought working hard, living in my car freshman year, and taking a full load of classes would get me prepared for the job hunt.

I thought having good grades, a handful of internships, and student involvement would help me secure a job for after graduation.

I thought, I thought, I thought…

I graduate college in 6.5 weeks and I have no idea what comes afterward. This is a weird feeling since my schedule is packed right now. I’m taking 15 credit hours, working a part-time job at a public relations firm, running an organization, and writing my first novel. However, once December hits, most of these things (except for the novel) will go away and I will have an open schedule.

Slightly (okay, very) frightening to say the least.

I always laughed at Lena Dunham’s character in Tiny Furniture. Now I feel like I might become the character.

I’ve always dreamed of moving somewhere else after college (either Chicago, NYC, or Seattle). Lately, I’ve been toying with the idea of going to Chicago for the improv scene. Pretty foolish, right?

On top of all of the lost leads, I haven’t had much time to devote to my novel. It’s my first novel and I’m writing it right now, something I’m proud to be doing, yet I don’t have near the amount of the desired time to do it. It sucks having to put a passion project on the back burner for things like writing papers and studying for tests. Whenever I’m not doing that I’m working my job, whenever I’m not doing that, I’m running an organization. I clock in only a few hours a week toward my novel.

It is the one thing that I can look forward to after graduation…yet I don’t even have the desired amount of time to devote to it. I hate it.

Not exactly how I planned my last semester of college going. Originally I wasn’t going to have the internship at the public relations firm this fall. Not having it would have freed up a lot of time to job search. I socked away money in my savings account and had a good enough financial aid package to get through the semester without working too much. Well, my place of work extended an offer for me to continue the internship through the fall. I wanted to say no but my bank account told me to say yes.

Anyways, what I’ve learned the past few weeks as my college graduation nears is that nothing is guaranteed. People will tell you things then won’t do it. Opportunities will arise, then they will disappear. The only way to get through is to keep moving forward (thanks Walt Disney).

I monitor my time more closely now and put any free time I have toward finishing my novel. I don’t exactly know the type of job I will have but I know the person I want to become.

Last fall I promised one of my teachers, Mr. Zmikly, that I was going to be a speaker at our college’s Mass Communication Week. I even set a date for it, October 19, 2015. This date is starting to make me nervous considering the thought I have of me working in a crappy low pay job and not really seeming all that qualified to be a speaker.

There is something keeping me from believing this. It’s like there are two people in my head: one thinking I’m going to be an unemployed bum and the other thinking “hey, even though this will be freaking tough, I can get through it and come out on top.”

A big thing I learned at my college’s Mass Communication Week last week was simple:

Make things. Get stuff done.

Trei Brundrett of Vox Media said this during a panel. I freaking loved it. Constantly I’m being instructed to have a perfect resume, thoughtful cover letter, 3-5 internships, good GPA, and have a know-how of many different skills. Several of my teachers and the career advisors have jammed this into my (as well as other students) heads.

Thinking of all of this can get overwhelming and leave a person forgetting to do an activity that matters: make things. 

So, even with the lost leads, disappointments, and rejections, I’m going to keep moving forward and keep making things. The “thing” right now include finishing my novel. There is a mass communication job fair tomorrow. Things will move forward, I just have to take the first step.

As Kenan & Kel (mainly Kel) would say, “Aw, here it goes!”

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